Qwikster steals Blockbuster name; Netflix apologizes third time

A few days ago, I apologized for being arrogant in the way Netflix raised the rates for those of you who wanted to get movies from us via both the mail and online.

Today, I’m writing to apologize for my apology.

In retrospect, I should have realized that splitting our company in two wasn’t the best way to demonstrate how sincere I was in apologizing the first time.

Some have questioned why Netflix is making it more difficult for customers to order, rate and pay for movies. Good questions. Sorry I don’t have time to answer today. My personal trainer is coming in, and then I have a late lunch.

Others don’t understand why we chose a name like Qwikster, which sounds like Trickster, and which we can’t even use on Twitter because some kid is churning out profanities on what should be our account. Yes, in retrospect we could have used an agent to buy the handle for a few thousand dollars in advance of our announcement. You live and learn.

To be honest, we just thought of this idea Sunday morning. In retrospective, we probably should have slept on it before making an announcement.

Here’s the deal. It’s really, really hard to buy the rights to movies. Especially when you want to let people watch as many movies as they can online for one low price. Studios don’t want to get three cents a film, if you know what I mean.

By giving our DVD business an odd new name and making it a separate company, we didn’t actually solve this problem. In the excitement of finding a video camera Sunday afternoon and taping our apology, we actually forgot to check whether launching Qwikster would make things better. My bad.

In closing, I’d like to apologize for our apology, and announce that we are renaming our DVD service Blockbuster. We’ll soon be opening a store near you. Tomorrow’s apology will be released in the late morning.